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The Obama Administration's proposed overhaul of the financial regulatory system has bankers up in arms. They claim the new rules would lower profitability, not mentioning that it would prevent them from engaging in the sort of heedless behavior that got the global economy into its current pickle.

The most popular fiction behind the deal that brought the NY Yankees' Triple-A affiliate to NEPA was that the Lackawanna County-owned International League franshise would not be sold and would be here in perpetuity.

We now know that in order to get the Yankees to ink the deal, then-county commissioner Bob Cordaro granted Mandalay Baseball a bargain-priced purchase option for the team. Mandalay has yet to exercise that option, but has made no secret of its desire for a new ballpark. The company has a track record of lobbying for new publicly funded facilities and for moving teams to other markets if it doesn't get what it wants.

In the midst of the current recession, though, negotiations have ground to a halt more or less. The revenue-strapped county can't begin to entertain the idea of building a new $50-million stadium, and its probably safe to say that tight credit has crimped Mandalay's plans to purchase the team.

One day, though, the sun will come out, the field will dry and the county and Mandalay will play ball again in earnest.

After proposing a 16.7-percent income tax rate hike that's off and running as if in Nikes made of lead. Gov. Ed Rendell has commanded his lieutenants to slash another $500 million in spending to further close the state's looming $3.2 billion budget deficit.

Such is life in this gloomy economy. Strangely, though, after the cuts and tax increases Rendell's 2009-10 budget is nearly unchanged, to say nothing of more than $600 million higher than this year's.

Fundamentalist Islam has long been at odds with the present. And save for oil extraction technology and nuclear enrichment, the Iranian brand of it has little love for modernity.

It's therefore been amusing to watch the country's regime attempt to squelch coverage of the post-stolen-election mass demonstrations and brutal crackdown. It's easy enough to sequster or deport foreign journalists. What's tough is controlling the online commentary and reportage from thousands of Iranian citizens using social-network applications like Twitter or Facebook.

The Abington Heights High School baseball team snags the 2009 state AAA Title, gutting out a 3-2 win over Chartiers Valley. The Comets thus become only the fourth District 2 school to win outright a team-sport statewide title.

Seventeen days have passed since Brenda Williams, a 52-year-old woman with a history of mental illness, was shot to death during an encounter with four Scranton police officers at her North Scranton apartment. The public still knows nothing about what happened during the episode, despite a Pennsylvania State Police investigative report that was filed with Lackawanna County District Attorney Andy Jarbola last Tuesday.

How many times was Williams shot (the initial autopsy simply described multiple gunshot wounds)? Was she shot by one of the officers? Two? All of them? What about the knife Williams reportedly brandished? What kind was it? Did she threaten the police with it? Why did four male officers need to use deadly force against a woman they knew was mentally unstable?

Jarbola says he'll finally make a statement about the investigation early this week (he said that a week ago). That's still several days late and a dollar short in my book.

Luzerne County uber-attorney Robert Powell cops a plea. After working in cahoots with disgraced former judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conhan to shut down the county's juvenile detention facility and replace it with his own facility (and kickback millions to the judges in return), he claims he's a "victim." The judges had him "over a barrel," he says. He was "strong-armed" into going along with the scheme, which incidentally earned him enough to afford a private jet and yacht.

The feds apparently agree with at least part of Powell's story — that the judges' unexpected demand for payment caught Powell off-guard — and thus only charged him with failing to report a felony and being an accessory after the fact to tax evasion. He now faces 21 to 27 months in federal prison.

He's getting off easy. Regardless of what he claims, he knew that the rights and lives of many Luzerne County kids and their families were being trampled. It's not unreasonable to believe that his actions were less the result of intimidation by the judges than by the realization that the gravy train would stop if the scandal came to light.